


Water Dance

by Tyellas



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Amazon river setting, F/M, Home at last, Post-Movie, Romance, Slime, Teratophilia, Underwater Sex, Vaginal Sex, dolphins being jerks, water mating adaptations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 06:30:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15858129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: After a turn along an Amazon river, Elisa realizes she and the creature are at home at last. And a peril or two brings out the creature’s jealous, protective side.





	Water Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PassiveGood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PassiveGood/gifts).



Since Elisa had left Baltimore for her new underwater life with the creature, their watery world had never been the same twice. Elisa was sure they had swum through every kind of seawater. Pure and polluted. Cool and warm. Choked with weeds and silt, so much so they had to kindle their bioluminescence. Terrifyingly deep and clear, so that they lit up again, to feel themselves alive against the darkness beneath.  

Elisa was deeply glad she had let the creature transform her more. She had gone beyond being human with gills to the silvery water-native she’d always dreamed of being. That had given her enough strength for the difficult parts of their journey.

She was still learning about their world. Amidst the vast currents, Elisa wasn’t sure when they had taken a turn for fresh water. Nor had she imagined that fresh-water rivers could be so wide and varied. But she had never seen the waters change so abruptly before. One moment, they were cloaked in milk-chocolate silt. The next, she and the creature were both blinking in dark, clear water.  When Elisa turned back, the milk-chocolate current was like an underwater wall of mud behind them. 

Elisa kicked herself up to the surface, despite the creature calling in warning behind her. Surfacing, she smiled in delight. She could see where the waters met! The silted water met the dark water in a clean, long line, two rivers joining. It was so fascinating that a boat was hovering at the meeting of the waters. Elisa dove back down, and dove deep.

This dark water tasted sweet and invigorating, like the first time water had touched Elisa’s new gills. Its flavor reminded her of the way the creature smelled in the long-lost confines of her apartment. Salt and fruit and something organic, almost erotic. She rejoined the creature.

The creature’s dark scales, streaked with vivid blue, blended into these depths marvelously. He circled around her, protectively, just as he did in the most frightening ocean stretches. Then he drew her to course upriver, a long, leaping, delicious swim, side by side. Yes, they must be home, for him to revel in the water like this, turning his flow into a glorious dance.

At long last, they were where the creature belonged.

They were home.

As sunset began, they drew closer to the shore. The last of the sunlight slanted into the water, turning this river-world into a greenish-gold heaven. Schools of fish veiled them with a sensuous tickle. These fish were too small to eat: silvery leaves, darts of color, shimmering in living sheets through the water. The creature responded with more playfulness, darting and spinning, brushing against Elisa. She was tiring, somewhat, but she wasn’t too weary for a smile at seeing him so happy.

Suddenly, Elisa was in the midst of a school of palm-sized fish. They were round and flat, with a lovely glitter-sparkle to their scales. She reached out to grab one for some energy – like the creature, she ate fresh fish, now, too. But this fish writhed in her hand and snapped. Hard. Elisa saw its serrated teeth too late, vented bubbles in shock as it nipped her badly. As her blood laced into the water, its entire school turned to her as one. This didn’t look good.

A snout beside Elisa snapped the ambitious fish up. The school fled. Elisa spun to see her rescuer, and was afraid again. It took her a moment to recognize the new, large creature alongside her as a dolphin. Its extended snout, with peg-like teeth, was almost obscene. It had a lumpy head that it turned disturbingly, so its tiny eyes could take her in. Worst of all, its hide was a sickly pink mottled with grey. She was reminded – it happened so rarely, now – of Strickland towards his end. Then there came a nudge too low along her back: a second pink dolphin. This wasn’t good, either. Dolphins, far more than sharks, could be trouble.  

The creature’s hissing roar made the water vibrate. Both dolphins bobbed in a moment’s gaping terror. The largest one, between the creature and Elisa, snapped its snout. A mistake. Elisa plummeted herself down, out of the way. What came next showed that the creature was the top of the food chain, here. His sleek speed outmatched the dolphin’s uncanny twists, and his claws raked its sides before it could scream.

He did not lower himself to finish the dolphin aggressor by eating the mottled pink flesh. Instead, he uttered a trill. And the school of fish was back, its glitter sinister now, turning as one at the blood in the water.  Just as Elisa covered her face, the creature plunged beside her. His playfulness gone, he scooped Elisa against him and swept them both away.

Finally, they whirled to a stop where the water was a mere thirty feet deep. The branches of a submerged tree, softened with emerald algae, gave some shelter, here. The water remained darkly green-gold, but the tree sheltered the river bed for an area of bare, tawny sand.

The creature, releasing Elisa at last, lit the strangely beautiful tree from beneath with angry, gleaming luminescence. Framed by the branches, he chirped and trilled and signed, a flood of meaning. She had to be careful, careful, careful. Good water, many animals. Hunger and danger, for she was beautiful.

Elisa nodded, patient and penitent. They were home, yes, but these waters still had their dangers. Elisa was happy to trade the deep sea currents, ships and pollution, for this sweet-dark water. And her own bioluminescence sparked pink at him saying she was beautiful.

The creature ended by pointing at her and clashing his hands together, then pointing at himself, rather imperiously. _Oh, my,_ Elisa thought. Was it the fight, or being in his home river, that had him this forceful? She swam over slowly, only one spiral along the way, lacing her silvery length along his waist. Very gently, he reached out to stop her by taking her injured hand. He raised it to his lips. Elisa’s heart cracked open while his lips’ slight touch healed her.

They were side by side now, the creature standing on the riverbed’s sand, Elisa drifting high enough to look him in the eye. To kiss him back, upon the lips, with ease.

The creature wrapped his arms around Elisa. She felt him exhale, water moving through his whole body to caress her. It was as sweet as the water to melt against him, to know herself safe in his arms after that fright. Elisa bowed her head to kiss down his throat, to his chest. The muscles there felt incredible. As if all the strength in the world was banded around his cold-blooded, merciful heart.

Elisa kept going. Her hair flowed out around her. It was thicker and longer now, the ends trailing instead of cleanly bobbed, and it made her feel sensuous and wild. With one hand, she reached up and stroked her locks against the creature’s tight, ivory-plated belly. He uttered a startled, pleased yawp. When Elisa followed that with more kisses, tracing the line where those ivory plates met, he caged her head, carefully, cherishingly, in his enormous hands. Claw and bone and web surrounded her. But he was far more vulnerable. For she mouthed the secret slit that would open to free his shaft.

The creature crooned a water-song as his body arced in response. Elisa’s mouth went tender at how his scales and body changed. She felt the thinning, the arcing, the swell as his body prepared to release his monstrous treasure. The slick skim along his scales and plates, protective slime, thickened and sweetened. Elisa felt herself both glide and cling to him. His unique taste blended with the water around. For all his strength, he trembled, on the edge of an irretrievable plunge into mating.  

Elisa arced her neck away, launched herself up from the tawny sand – but not far. Only far enough to turn and slide her back against the creature’s front. On their swim here, she had earned marvelous curves, dancer’s thighs, a firm, high bottom. She wanted her creature to take her where that horrid dolphin had intruded: to show him that she, loving him, would give him everything.

This fluid, floating dance would have been impossible on land. Elisa would never have been so weightless as the creature seized her waist. She would not have been able to press her body back against his released erection with only a thorough breath. They would not have slid as harmoniously as the two currents, dark and light, coursing together for a time.

In these cool depths, Elisa ached to burn with friction. She urged her body higher, or perhaps the creature lifted her. His lengthy shaft split her legs from behind. She spread and let her cunt slide against it, opening. In the water, she gasped, silent for all the coins of air that shimmered silver from her throat. As rapt in instinct as the creature, she bowed forwards. They moved as one, and the head of his shaft pierced her, slid home.

Taking her, his groan shook the river’s bed. His thrusts were as irresistible as the most forceful ocean current. Feeling him monstrous and fierce and claiming, Elisa trembled. She wriggled back, to take more of him in.

The sensations were wild, every inch of her skin caressed by slime and flesh and water, her cunt opened to his pulsing thrusts. Yet they were not enough. It was delicious, how his vast hands now wrapped around her hips, his thumbs digging into her curves. She still had to reach back and tap his grasp. Instantly, he released her, despite his protesting rumble of hunger.

On their journey, Elisa had learned what he knew. In this dance under water, sex was nothing without togetherness. After fearing tides and predators, Elisa knew, now, why he was so earnest to embrace her close, penetrate her deep. Why he clasped her like she was the key to life itself. His adaptations were perfect in every way, for the mechanics of love underwater, and for love itself.

Elisa responded to her slight freedom with her wildest move yet. She lifted her right leg in a dancer’s split. In the weightless water, she could turn herself about without breaking their bodies’ connection, still penetrated.

When their faces met, Elisa delighted to see him nearly light up with joy. The creature wanted to touch all of her, now. One hand pulling her hips tight to him, another skimming over her breasts.

He sank down, and she leaned back, and the sand embraced them. The riverbed gave them just enough support as they pulsed together. It was not long before Elisa flashed helplessly in her first climax. The creature had enough self-control to dim his lights as he drew close. Elisa trembled beneath his muscles as he, too, came, flooding her insides with his silky milt. They remained curved together for long heartbeats, the creature in the bliss of his instincts, Elisa free of fear and worry, basking in his love.

They slid apart at last. Elisa let her natural buoyancy float her against him. Under water, his milt clung to her, shielding her most vulnerable parts against the sand. She nuzzled his strong shoulder, marveling at how everything about him was so perfect for this place, these waters.

They both glanced up as a shadow blocked out the water’s slight lights. A broad-bottomed boat was cruising overhead.

Elisa and the creature both flattened down together, darkening in the lee of the submerged tree. They drew apart to look at each other, and both nodded. Elisa needed no warning about the most perilous creature in this river: humans.

He vented a deep breath, followed it by a singing cry. It meant, Elisa decided, gratitude to this place for sheltering them. Her heart overflowed. If he was strong enough to love everything here, she – well, she would try.

And she followed the creature as he shot upstream again, pure and tireless. Like this water and his will, his body, were one and the same.


End file.
